Feeling Medieval: The Inaugural Conference of the Society for the Study of Medieval Emotions, is taking place on Tuesday 31 May–Wednesday 1 June 2022. The conference will be held in a hybrid format, and we therefore welcome online attendance.
It is free to attend online via Microsoft Teams, but please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/feeling-medieval-the-inaugural-conference-of-ssme-tickets-332609382617. The link will be disseminated 24 hours before the conference.
Please see below for full programme details.
Tuesday 31 May 2022
09:00–10:15 Keynote Lecture
Finding Emotion in Medieval English Law – Wendy Turner (Augusta University)
10:15–10:30 Break
10:30–12:00 Sources for Medieval Emotions
Angry Mobs: Crowds, Emotions, and Justice, ca. 1100 – Katharina Ulrike Mersch (Goethe-Universität)
Emotions in the Letters of Fifteenth-Century English Letter Collections: The Cely and Paston Letters – Martina Häcker (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
Simon of Tournai’s Blasphemy and the Fear of Godlessness: Getting Emotions from Accusations – Keagan Brewer (Macquarie University)
12:00–13:00 Lunch
13:00–14:30 Methodological Approaches to Emotions Study
Sensing the Emotions: Mind and Body in Early Medieval Gaul – John Merrington (University of Oxford)
Textometry as a Method for Analysing Medieval Emotions? The Case of Peter Damian (1007–1072/73) and His Combat Letters – Valérie Thon (Université de Paris & Université de Liège)
Narratological and Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Emotions in Medieval Romance – Sonia García de Alba (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg)
Emotional Regimes in Anglo-French Surgery, 1200–1400 – Fiona Knight (University of Cambridge)
14:30–14:45 Break
14:45–16:15 Multidisciplinary Approaches to Emotion
Transient-yet-Reminiscent Emotions among Medieval Believers on Romanesque Sculpted Capitals – Hee Sook Lee-Niinioja (Independent Scholar)
The Text and the Cemetery: Seeking Expressions of Parental Love in Early Medieval England – Julie Kilbey (University of Birmingham)
Moral Agency and Shame in Medieval Philosophical Psychology – Ritva Palmén (University of Helsinki)
16:15–16:30 Break
16:30–18:00 Approaching Emotions in Literature
Repetition, Recollection and Spiritual Affect in the Wooing Group Texts – Anne Baden-Daintree (University of Bristol)
‘Spacious Joy’: Entering Joy in Medieval Literature – Lucie Kaempfer (University of Düsseldorf)
Swa Micclum Geangsumod Þæt He Hine Sylfen Acwealde: Self-Killing and Emotion in Old English Literature – Kayla Kemhadjian (University of Leeds)
She Never Wept: Guðrún’s Subversion of the Civilizing Hall in Atlakviða – Juliane Witte (Utrecht University)
Wednesday 1 June 2022
09:00–10:15 Keynote Lecture
‘Lo, yonder he rit!’ Performance and Performativity in Middle English – Carolyne Larrington (University of Oxford)
10:15–10:30 Break
10:30–12:00 Performing Emotions: Tears and Rituals of Sorrow
The Politics of Grief in The History of William Marshal – Lili Scott Lintott (University of St Andrews/University of Glasgow)
Tears, Weeping, and Sorrow in the Writings of Innocent III and His Curia (1198–1216) – Kirsty Day (Aalborg University)
Guidelines for Grievers: Reconstructing a Medieval Protocol for Mourning – Ana del Campo (University of St Andrews)
Grief and Grievance: Emotive Performativities in Hary’s Wallace – Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Bristol)
12:00–13:00 Lunch
13:00–14:30 Emotions, Crusading, and Methodologies
The Angry Crusader: Tancred’s Rage in the Sources – Francesca Petrizzo (University of Leeds)
Fear and Joy in the Holy Land: The Franks of Jerusalem as an Emotional Community, 1099–1187 – Alan Murray (University of Leeds)
The Function of Emotions in Geoffrey of Villehardouin’s Conqueste de Constantinople – Holly Dempster-Edwards (University of Liverpool)
The Virgin Mary as a Zarte Mait? Authorial Judgments and the Emotionality of the Kronike von Pruzinlant – Patrick Eickman (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
14:30–14:45 Break
14:45–16:15 Non-Christian Sources for Medieval Emotions
Preaching Justice and Piety: Ibn al-Jawzi and the Emotive Turn in Medieval Islamic Political Thought – Han Hsien Liew (Arizona State University)
Mining and Modelling Subjectivity in the Islamic West: The Emotional Transition of the Fourteenth Century – Laila M. Jreis Navarro (Universidad de Zaragoza)
Weeping Barbarians: Emotion and Ethnocultural Identity in Cross-Border Confrontations in Medieval East Asia – Ya Zuo (University of California)
16:15–16:30 Break
16:30–18:00 Narrating Emotion
‘Heroic’ Empathy and Schadenfreude: Emotional Constituents of Justice in Middle High German Heroic Epic – Christopher Liebtag Miller (University of Notre Dame)
‘De los sos ojos tan fuertemente llorando’: Weeping in the Cantar de Mio Cid – Connie L. Scarborough (Texas Tech University)
‘Pensa Oggimai Per Te’: Emotion, Narrator, Reader in Dante’s Divina Commedia – Kathleen Verduin (Hope College)
18:00–18:10 Closing remarks
We would like to thank the following institutions, whose generous funding has made this event possible: the Past & Present Society; Royal Historical Society; St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies; School of History, St Andrews; St Leonard’s Doctoral and Postgraduate College; Department of History, King’s College London
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at socmedievalemotions@gmail.com.